The Giver: See Three Exclusive Photos from the Movie

It's been 20 years in the making – and looks like it's been worth the wait.

Check out these three exclusive photos from the film version of The Giver, which hits screens Aug. 15, two decades after Lois Lowry first published the beloved novel about a dystopian society.

The book and film follow the story of Jonas (Brenton Thwaites), a teenager chosen to have a special role in his seemingly perfect world, which injects people in the hand every morning to inoculate them against their emotions.

Jonas is poised to become the next Receiver of Memory – the person who stores memories formed before the period of "Sameness" – and his world is changed when he meets the previous "Receiver" (aka "The Giver"), portrayed by Jeff Bridges.

The three images show Jonas at various stages of his journey. The black-and-white photo is from early in the film before Jonas and Fiona (Odeya Rush) – who plays his love interest in the film – awaken to the realities of their world.

Odeya Rush and Brenton Thwaites in The Giver

Weinstein Co.

In another shot, we see Jonas holding the apple he's used to block the hand injections.

And we see Jonas and Fiona share an onscreen kiss, which is intended to be a sort of goodbye embrace.

Book purists have noted that Fiona's role has been significantly expanded in the film. But even Lowry herself acknowledges that differences between the book and film are inevitable – and that's okay.

"The important thing is that a film doesn't obliterate a book. The movie is here now. But the book hasn't gone away," she writes in the foreword of the latest edition, and also published on The Huffington Post. "It has simply grown up, grown larger, and begun to glisten in a new way."